How to Enhance a Technical Illustration with WidthScribe and Adobe Illustrator

Today we will take a close look at the features of the unique WidthScribe plug-in in the example of creating a technical illustration of a car that was produced for the tool’s advert WidthScribe Introduction.

In this tutorial you will learn how to use the Width Gradient and Width Selector Tools in practice, as well as how to optimise the finished vector artwork.

Create outline of car using Astute Graphics plug-ins

My objective was to create a technical illustration of a car based on a still frame from the movie. I inserted the bitmap image that was given to me into a new document of Adobe Illustrator (File > Place…)and locked it in the Layers panel.

Recreate all the elements of the car by using only paths of the same uniform thickness.

Let’s take a quick look at the tools I used to create the outline of the car. To create curved segments, I always use InkScribe Tool (DrawScribe plug-in). This allows me to create and edit paths with a single tool. In addition, Smart Remove Points, Ghost Handles and alternating between corner and smooth points by double-clicking on points or Bezier handles allows you to speed your work two-fold comparing to the Pen Tool (P).

To round the corners I certainly use the Dynamic Corners Tool (VectorScribe plug-in). Now I cannot even imagine working without this tool. I would have probably spent a few hours on rounding corners in this illustration alone. Now simply click, click and click.

Some curved segments are parts of the ellipses. To create these paths I use the Dynamic Shapes Tool (VectorScribe plug-in). This tool allows you to immediately draw ellipses, located at the right angles.

Work on the illustration using the Width Gradient Tool

Thus, all elements of the car are created.

Of course, you would agree that such a technical illustration does not look very impressive. In order to improve the result, we can make some lines thicker to separate the basic elements from the minor ones, and even apply the effect of linear perspective to the entire artwork. Let’s see how the WidthScribe can help us with that.